The present invention relates to a digital image information compression and decompression apparatus wherein a succession, or a run of a given length, of pixels of the same type is compressed by addressing a first read only memory (ROM) which carries the binary one-dimensional compression codes, and in which these codes are decompressed by addressing a second read only memory (ROM) which carries the corresponding information in respect of the type of pixel and the run length.
Compression and decompression apparatuses, either of one-dimensional type or of two-dimensional type, are known, As is known, for the two-dimensional type, in coding an elementary line which is read by the scanning unit, account is taken of a previously read reference line.
In the known apparatuses, processing of the images using the two-dimensional method is effected by means of complicated equipment which requires software or programs which take a relatively long time to execute. An apparatus has been proposed, for one-dimensional compression and decompression which is effected in the hardware. However, two-dimensional coding cannot be effected therein, so that the degree of compression is limited.